Late posts due to the rallies in Sydney and Canberra. What an experience!
Feb 6th 2009, 4 pm
Eyewitness accounts from Catholic priests who visited the detention centres run by Sri Lankan Army (where fleeing civilan families are kept) is by well respected tamil writer and journalist DBS Jeyaraj who keeps the identity of the priests a secret. Local and foreign journalists and aid workers are not allowed, and these camps are run entirely by the SL army.
“The state of the people is very very pathetic. They are treated like prisoners. They shared that they are given food but when they eat them they experience many stomach problems. They are not allowed to go out. They go to a river-side for bathing. For this bath seven or eight army accompanies them. Even, when the women have bath these army men are looking at them and it is terrible for them to have such kind of bath. Many children are not given any education facility. The small rooms are made out of ‘Thakaram’. It is very difficulty for them to stay inside during hot times. They are not given enough soap items. Children are not given proper milk powder….” – Catholic priest
I am very alarmed by this report. This detention camps could be the beginning of ghettos like that of the Nazis or what we saw in Kosovo.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan Defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse (the President’s brother) has made this outrageous statement during his interview with SKYNews. Mr Rajapakse is widely implicated in the killing of journalist and editor Lasantha Wickramutuga.
Mr Gotabhaya Rajapakse states that “No hospital should operate outside the Safety Zone…everything beyond the safety zone is a legitimate target”. He is clearly forgetting the Geneva Conventions when he says so.
He also asks “who’s Lasantha” in another interview with BBC
***
The fate of the Tamil civilians caught up in the Vanni region of Sri lanka hangs on the balance. While many wait for the Sri Lanka military to take over the Vanni region, they forget the fact that the military will massacre or disappear 1/2 of this population for it’s political views and defiance.
Terrible things are happening and nobody wants to take action
* Tamil man recounts tales of horror in Sri Lanka war - India e-news
”Tamil civilians trying to flee Sri Lanka’s war were blown up and some bled to death on the streets due to shelling by the military, an elderly Tamil man said, recalling the horrifying scenes he saw before escaping from the Tamil Tiger zone in the country’s north”
* What’s happening to the people who flee to government areas? An article written by a Sinhalese writer notes that “a little-publicised Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released last December, titled “Besieged, Displaced, and Detained,” makes clear that for almost a year the government has been incarcerating all Tamil civilians fleeing the fighting in the Vanni region, denying their fundamental legal and democratic rights, as well as adequate food, shelter and health and sanitation facilities, in flagrant violation of international law…”
